The molecular structure of and interconversion tunneling in the argon-cis-1,2-difluoroethylene complex

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Creator	Marshall, Mark D. (Department of Chemistry, Amherst College)
Creator	Leung, Helen O. (Department of Chemistry, Amherst College)
Creator	Mueller, Jessica L. (Department of Chemistry, Amherst College)
Creator	Amberger, Brent (Department of Chemistry, Amherst College)
Title	The molecular structure of and interconversion tunneling in the argon-cis-1,2-difluoroethylene complex
Abstract	Guided by ab initio predictions, the structure of the gas-phase complex formed between cis-1,2-difluoroethylene and an argon atom in a pulsed molecular jet is determined using microwave spectroscopy in the 5.7–21.5 GHz region of the spectrum. This is a non-planar, symmetric species, with the argon atom located in the FCCF cavity of the difluoroethylene. The transitions in the microwave spectrum are observed to be split by an interconversion tunneling motion between the two equivalent configurations for the complex with the argon atom located either above or below the difluoroethylene molecular plane. Both one- and two-dimensional discrete variable representation calculations of the tunneling splitting using the ab initio interaction potential for the complex suggest that the barrier to interconversion is overestimated by theory.
Journal Title	Journal of Chemical Physics
Publication Date	October 7, 2013
Identifier (DOI)	10.1063/1.4823494
Citation	Leung, Helen O. et al. “The Molecular Structure of and Interconversion Tunneling in the Argon-Cis-1,2-Difluoroethylene Complex.” The Journal of Chemical Physics 139.13 (2013): 134303.
Languages	English
Genre	Article
Subject	Molecular structure
Subject	Tunneling (Physics)
Subject	Argon
Subject	Complex compounds
Subject	Electrostatics
Part of	The Amherst College Octagon
Repository	The Amherst College Octagon
Access and Use	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license (CC BY NC ND 4.0)